Homeowners who built a two-floor house without planning permission have refused to knock it down.
The structure lies on the family's driveway and was used as a gym, it was claimed... but the owners insisted it was staying.
Planning chiefs allowed Madam Pal Singh to erect a single-storey garage at his semi-detached home in 2019.
But authorities on Monday gave them until July to demolish the new building after an appeal was lost.
BirminghamLive reports that the structure remains standing, and the owners said it was turned into a gym during the Covid lockdown - complete with punch bags and machines.
But when approached by Sun Online, a woman who answered the door said: “We’ve not been told to demolish the property. We use it as a gym, we go in there every day.
"We all go in there - there are about four or five families around here. We all use the gym.
"We’re not ashamed of it. We’ve got nothing to prove to anyone. We’re not on benefits, we spent our hard-earned money to build what we’ve built.
“If and when the council decides, and the neighbours are moaning 'get it down', we will deal with it in our own way. As it is at the moment, it’s staying.”
Another woman, who did not give her name, said: “Until the council gets in direct contact with us to tell us to demolish it, what we’re going to say to everyone is ‘f*** you' because we’re going to keep it. And that’s that."
They said: “No-one around here has a problem with it. All the neighbours think it looks nice. It was a garage, we turned into a gym during Covid.
"The funny thing is when the council came to inspect it, he saw all the gym equipment in there.
“There are punch bags in there, there are other gym machines.”
Inspector Thomas Shields wrote in his report: "It is substantially larger than the approved building. It is not a minor difference.
"In comparison with the approved garage, the appeal building has a footprint of approximately 8.7m x 4.7m and a height of 5.3m. Instead of a garage door, there is a pedestrian door into the front room and a tripartite bow window. Two more windows in the rear elevation serve a separate, smaller room.
"Instead of single-storey, the appeal building is 1.5 storey and has two rooms in the roof, facilitated by an almost full-width box dormer.
"All of these differences, between what was approved, and what has been built, are not minor. Since the appeal building bears little resemblance to the scale and design of the approved single-storey garage, it does not benefit from that planning permission.
"The requirements of the notice are: demolish the entire unauthorised detached structure and remove all demolished building materials and rubble from the premises."
A spokesperson for Birmingham City Council said: "We served an EN (enforcement notice) for the demolition of the unauthorised structure when the owner lost at appeal. We are in discussions with the owner re timeline. Compliance with the notice was due by July 1, 2022."
